


Loose Follow

by evanui



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Crossover, Dubious Science, Gen, Humor, ManDadlorian, No Romance, Snark, Time Travel, Tony Stark Acting as Harley Keener's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, tony and din adopting every child they see, two helmeted heroes and their superpowered pseudo-sons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:21:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29148135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evanui/pseuds/evanui
Summary: “I figured it out,” Tony said casually. He took a casual sip of coffee and casually kicked his legs up on the table, like the casual person he was. He was as cool as a cucumber. As chilly as a pickle. As icily, freezingly cold as the iciest, freezingest, coldest vegetable you could think of, take your pick.Oh yeah, he was awesome.Or: In which a caffeine-high Tony Stark invents time travel. Sort of. He has some kinks to work out. Said kinks are the reason why he, Peter, and Harley are now traveling on a spaceship in a different galaxy with some guy with a helmet and his small green alien. Featuring accidental child acquisition (a lot of it) and Din Djarin's extensive babysitter network.
Relationships: Din Djarin & Grogu | Baby Yoda, Harley Keener & Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Harley Keener & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Tony Stark & Din Djarin
Comments: 15
Kudos: 53





	Loose Follow

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from a Tony Stark quote in Spider-Man Homecoming. It was also an Easter egg in Chapter 14: The Tragedy.
> 
> 12% of the credit for this fic goes to my sister, who beta read.

Tony paced back and forth across the lab, shaking his phone like it would make Peter pick up faster. Hypothesis: maybe yelling at it would help.

“Pick up the phone,” he said experimentally.

He waited.

 _“Uh, hey, Mr. Stark,”_ Peter’s voice mumbled. Conclusion: initial test trial supported the hypothesis. More trials needed to confirm. _“What’s going on?”_

“There’s an emergency,” Tony said shortly.

_“Wha—what kind of emergency? Like, a Spider-Man emergency? I’ll get my web shooters—where are you, I’ll swing over there as fast as I can—”_

“No time,” Tony interrupted. “I sent a suit to pick you up, it should be arriving right now.”

_“What’s happeni—”_

“No time to explain.”

Peter skidded into the lab, his Spider-Man suit balled up under one arm and his web shooters spilling out of the other. “What’s going on?” He spun around. “I don’t see any bad guys. Where are the bad guys?”

“I figured it out,” Tony said casually. He took a casual sip of coffee and casually kicked his legs up on the table, like the casual person he was. He was as cool as a cucumber. As chilly as a pickle. As icily, freezingly cold as the iciest, freezingest, coldest vegetable you could think of, take your pick.

Oh yeah, he was awesome.

“Uh,” said Peter, “what are we talking about?”

Tony spun his MacBook around to face Peter. “We’re talking about this,” he said, gesturing to the computer. “This is genius. I’m a genius. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I’m a genius.”

“Uh,” Peter said again. “Is this an emergency?”

“Oh yeah,” Tony grinned. “This is revolutionary, this is. You’re witnessing the dawn of a new era of science. Definitely an emergency. You know, it’s really not my fault if I’m tooting my own horn. I just have such a big horn, it’s practically begging me to toot it.”

Peter sighed, dropping the Spider-Man suit to the ground and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “No offense, Mr. Stark, but did you seriously just wake me up at two in the morning and fly me all the way upstate just because of something you programmed?” He frowned. “Is that a MacBook? I thought you hated Apple products.”

“I do. But Stark Industries tech,” Tony paused dramatically, “doesn’t support Windows.”

Peter did not appreciate the significance of this. “Why does that matter? What are you doing?”

Tony took another sip of coffee. Cool as a cucumber. “Discovering time travel.”

Peter blinked. Twice. Three times. “What?” He straightened. “You discovered _what?_ Why didn’t you _lead_ with that, Mr. Stark, you had me thinking this was all some kind of prank! You discovered _time travel?_ You’ve gotta be kidding me. How?”

“Turns out the Windows copy dialog creates a warp in the four-dimensional curvature of spacetime, merging two points that aren't temporally adjacent,” Tony announced. Wow, just casually dropping the phrase _the four-dimensional curvature of spacetime_ made him sound 200% smarter. He made a mental note to say it more often. “So, when you’re transferring files, the reason why the time estimates are so out of whack is because you’re actually—”

“Traveling in time,” Peter breathed.

“Yep. The file transfer is proceeding along a normal linear progression of time, it’s just that you’re not.” Tony fished what looked like an ordinary digital clock out of the catastrophic mess that was his workstation. “This is how we’re gonna test it. I rigged this little beauty up to measure the amount of temporal distortion and calculate the current time relative to our surroundings rather than to us. If I’m right, which I am, the estimated download completion time will jive with what we see on the clock, and boom. Time travel. Once Harley gets his lazy butt over here we’ll start a file transfer and watch magic happen.”

Peter picked up the clock and turned it over. The display read:

**2:21 AM 08/30/2017 | AVENGERS COMPOUND**

“Why does it say the location?”

 _“Space_ time,” Tony explained. “Theoretically, we’ll be displaced in space as well as time. Probably not enough to notice, though. Depends on the size of the rupture.”

“Hey, losers,” a voice drawled from behind them. Harley traipsed through the doorway, his hands stuffed in his pockets. He was going through a phase. The phase was called “annoying” and it had lasted for fifteen years now.

“You know, Peter lives two hundred miles away and he still got here faster than you did,” Tony said without looking up from his computer. “It takes, what, five minutes to walk down the stairs? What took you so long, squirt?”

The boys were both members of the exclusive, invite-only Stark Industries high school internship program, which was why Harley was living with Tony at the compound over the summer. Peter had decided to work from New York and stay with May for the summer because he was responsible or whatever. His loss. It wasn’t like Tony was petty or anything like that. Peter was just missing out on the coolest, most awesome science program ever, that was all.

Harley ignored Tony completely, which was normal. “There any donuts left?”

“One, and it’s for Peter. You don’t deserve donuts.”

“Too bad, I’m taking it.” Harley dug a box of donuts out from under one of the work tables and popped the last one in his mouth.

“Good,” Tony said pointedly. “I _wanted_ you to take that donut. Because now you’re going to get diabetes and heart disease from your unhealthy carbohydrate consumption, and then you’ll have a heart attack, which you will totally deserve. And then you’ll be lying on your deathbed, _dying,_ and you’ll say, ‘I wish I’d listened to Tony because he’s always right about everything!’ Because he is.”

Harley rolled his eyes. “This is coming from a man who thinks six cups of black coffee and a Snickers bar is a balanced breakfast,” he told Peter.

“Hey,” Tony objected. “Snickers have peanuts, which are protein, and milk chocolate, which is dairy, and coffee beans come from plants so coffee is a vegetable. See? Balanced breakfast. No grain, but I’m gluten free.”

“You are not. Anyway, you’re missing fruit.”

Tony shrugged. “Ah, well. Can’t get ’em all.”

Peter glanced back and forth between the two of them, his eyes wide.

“I’m glad _you_ still have respect for your elders, Spider-Kid,” Tony told him. “This one’s beyond all hope.”

Harley bumped Peter with his shoulder, grinning. “Tony needs some disrespect every once in a while. It’s good for his ego.”

“Uh,” said Peter.

“You’re corrupting him.” Tony tossed Peter the clock. “Loosen up, kid, time for time travel.”

Harley’s mouth dropped. “Wait, I thought you were joking about that! It works? You seriously figured out time travel?”

“Yep. Which you would have known if you’d gotten here in time.” Tony rubbed his hands together and turned to the computer. “All right, let’s make history.”

Harley rolled his eyes. “That wasn’t funny.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tony said, vibrating in excitement. Literally. The six cups of coffee and one Snickers bar he had for breakfast probably contributed. “Transferring files... now.”

He let go of the mouse with a flourish. The three of them crowded around the MacBook.

**Estimated time of completion: 15 min**

“The clock says it’s 2:32,” Peter whispered. “So completion should be at 2:47.”

“We can add, kid,” Tony said.

The display changed. Harley inhaled sharply.

**Estimated time of completion: 16 min**

Peter gave a strangled shout. “2:31! It’s 2:31!”

“Yes!” Tony whooped and pulled Peter into a hug, thumping him on the back. “Uh... that wasn’t a hug. Just pushing you out of the way so I can see the clock.” He tilted the clock face up. “Yep, I can see it now. It says I’m a genius.”

Harley made a halfhearted attempt to roll his eyes, but he couldn’t keep the grin off his face. “Science is awesome.”

Peter jabbed a finger at the screen. “It’s changing again! Look—”

Tony pushed them out of the way and squinted at the computer. “Estimated time of completion: a long time,” he read out loud. He paused, but the text didn’t change. “That makes no sense.”

The lab swirled around him as if a cosmic entity had taken a paintbrush to it, and existence bent into something that sort of looked like a lollipop except it was three-dimensional and also a cylinder and he was looking at it through a fish-eye lens. Tony could see Here on one end and There on the other, with concentric circles of both Here and There (or maybe Somewhere In Between) squeezing tighter and tighter until they appeared to merge into a tunnel. Whenever he turned his head, the universe appeared to warp like a bubble blown into a thin membrane.

It was awesome.

Also unethical. Very very unethical. You were probably supposed to at least let the legal guardians know before taking two minors through a possibly unstable wormhole. Tony swore under his breath and summoned his armor, the phrase “safety precautions” entering his head for probably the first time ever.

Peter’s mouth dropped, and he turned the clock face towards Tony with trembling hands. “Mr. Stark…”

The display read:

**A LONG TIME AGO | A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY**

**Author's Note:**

> Chapters will probably alternate between Tony and Din's POV. The next update will be sometime between now and never. I'm not at all confident in my ability to finish a multichapter fic, but I REALLY REALLY want this crossover to happen and I'm hoping getting feedback will inspire me to write, so please leave a comment if you don't mind!
> 
> In case you're curious, this is what it would look like to travel through a wormhole: http://physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2014/11/what-does-journey-through-wormhole.html
> 
> Also, yes, I know time doesn't work like that. Shhh.


End file.
